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As Michael was teeing off with thousands of people lining the opening hole and barely enough prep time to stretch, Beth was securing tickets for Michael’s parents Tom and Josephine, and sister Erin. Finding Pops added another wrinkle to the whirlwind morning — he was playing golf at a nearby course, his cell phone turned off.

Beth got to Whistling Straits to see her husband putt on hole No. 6. She found her father on No. 9. They walked alongside the rest of the round.

Tom and Josephine got there in time to see their son get an ovation, from their front-row grandstand seats on the 18th green.

“Let’s go ‘M.O.’” one fan yelled on No. 17. From the first tee to the final putt, O’Reilly smiled and acknowledged his fans — many of whom were also his friends.

The on-course highlight of the non-round was a birdie on 13. He unofficially shot an 82, counting the gimme putt he picked up on 15.

It wasn’t just a cool moment for him.

“To walk the course with a very good friend, and play a golf course that we take for granted on how special it is, it was awesome,” said O’Reilly’s caddie, Todd Wagner, whose day job is heading the Kohler Golf Academy. O’Reilly and Wagner are each marking their 20th year of golf at Kohler Company.

Hoffmann, the golfer officially keeping score, was at 2-under before a double-bogey on 17. He finished at even-par 72.

O’Reilly — who also marked for Scott Drummond at the 2004 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits — called Hoffmann “a gentleman,” who “probably carries about 50 yards past me.”

But with all due respect to the young heavy hitter from Florida, he wasn’t the guy fans were behind most.

“The marker crowd was good out there,” Wagner joked.

“They were yelling at me, and at Todd,” O’Reilly said. “There were more people out there watching us than Morgan.”

Not keeping score didn’t make the experience any less memorable or special. Quite the contrary. O’Reilly will look back at this with as much fondness as anyone else who got to chip out of the sand or retrieve a ball from the vast Lake Michigan shoreline this weekend. He isn’t moving on to the next town or the next course, trying to cash in and move up in the standings.

Next week, he goes back to his day job, one heck of an experience richer.

“We were just having fun. Had a few good shots, hit some not so good ones,” he said. “When the crowd gives you that ‘U-rah-rah,’ it’s pretty fun.”